


lights spills (at the end of the world)

by saphinias



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Captain America: The First Avenger, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 14:52:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17246195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saphinias/pseuds/saphinias
Summary: Name one hero who was happy.





	lights spills (at the end of the world)

**Author's Note:**

> I glanced at my works today because I couldn't remember if I had posted anything this year and it turns out I hadn't. So here's this, it's been sitting in my drafts for months and is one part of a whole.
> 
> Here's to 2019 fellas and pals.

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”

Madeline Miller,  _The Song of Achilles_

 

-

 

It was a sunny day and Bucky was gone.  He lay forever in the snow and Steve sat in a bombed-out bar, rays of sun beaming down as if warmth still existed in this world.

Steve had always been the one teetering on the edge of his own mortality, not Bucky.  A world away from home, a world away from who he had been. This is what tipping the scales had gotten him.  He drank whiskey that tasted like fire and thought about laughing. Instead, he sat trapped in this body that was never supposed to be his.

Half-remembered fairy tales and old wives' tales tumbled through his mind.  Tempting fate always costs. Heroes always sacrifice. He should have known better, moved faster, been stronger.

He should have been better.

Through the tumble of heroes and happy endings that would never be his, his mind replayed the faces of their men when he’d told them.  When he had come back alone. There was only one reason to come back alone. He almost didn’t say anything at all, almost careened right past them except -

_ I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry - _

His apparently superior physical form failed him and he fell to his knees and wretched as the men watched on.  He didn’t care. He wanted to die. It was Morita who had clapped a hand on his back and asked what happened. It was the Colonel who managed to get him standing, who ordered him to give a mission report.  There was little sympathy there. Men were dying in this war, and it was about time Captain America share in the experience of a soldier.

And here, three bottles of whiskey in, he finally sat as a true token of his generation.  How life went on after this sort of thing, he wasn’t sure. His mind drifted to back alleys in Brooklyn, remember how sweet it was to forget himself in a fight.  But down that road Bucky appeared at the end of every alley, toting a smirk and a cocksure attitude to save him all over again. The past was too much to bear, but the thing about the war was he could have all the fights he could take.  And, god willing, a fight he couldn’t take.


End file.
